The United States Tuesday welcomed Venezuela’s “civic” referendum lifting term limits for the president and all politicians, but urged support for democracy and tolerance in the country.

I believe it was ShrinkWrapped who once said liberals are irony-poor, and that comes to mind right now. The article continues,

“We congratulate the civic and participatory spirit of the millions of Venezuelans who exercized their democratic right to vote,” State Department spokesman Noel Clay told AFP.

Venezuelans on Sunday voted 54 percent in favor of constitutional reform sought by President Hugo Chavez to run for unlimited reelection, in his bid to consolidate his brand of socialism critics compare to Cuba’s communism.

Clay said that after the vote, “it is important that elected officials now focus on governing democratically and addressing the issues of concern to the Venezuelan people.”

“We encourage all sectors of Venezuelan society to respect the diversity of use (of the vote) that is the strength of a pluralistic democracy,” he added.

The US reaction to Venezuela’s vote comes uncharacteristically before the complete tally has been announced. The country’s electoral board has issued its first, 54-46 percent vote result with only 94 percent of precincts reporting.

Congratulating this referendum is an insult to liberal forces in Venezuela which have been battling mightily against long odds and at risk of arrest, to preserve some semblance of a liberal society in a country deeply mired in the grip of crypto-fascist hysteria.
…
It should be understood that it is the liberal dispossition –one that supports and informs constitutional restraint on state power– not the democratic procedure, that distinguishes Western democracy from being the will of a fanatical mob. Liberalism is the soul that makes democracy moral and viable. The United States should not praise any democratic outcome as instinsically worthwhile, as Bush once did. What it should praise are liberal democratic outcomes….and Chavez’s coupling of potential permanence with his already near autocratic authority, is no victory for liberalism.

Comments

Serves Michelle right. Had she some principles and met with some of the opposition, instead of confining her contacts in Cuba to totalitarians, I would have some sympathy for her.

As when Hugo stiffed Argentina on its bonds, this is one time where I salute Fidel for punking someone who had kowtowed to him. Perhaps Michelle will learn from this that there is no reciprocity in making nice with the likes of Castro and Chavez, therefore no point in doing so. Castro and Chavez see it one way only: my way or the highway.

All I could think of after seeing the picture was Fidel leaning over and quoting, “You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste”